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Sunday, March 9, 2014

Adolph Reed, Jr. on Salon and in Harper's are must reads.

I got a jolt from reading an interview with Adolph Reed, Jr. on Salon. Here's the link to Thomas Frank's interview. Mr. Reed has an article in the current Harper's magazine. I think both the article and the interview are must-reads for me. I'm sure I'll have to read each twice. It's deep stuff.
I argue a lot in this space that the Democratic Party has compromised itself to the point of being useless as a counterweight to the Republican remaking of America. Mr. Reed has a grasp on this you simply must read.
I won't reiterate the arguments here, but here is one quote from Reed contained in the Salon interview: "Here’s a factoid: a Roper poll a month before the 1944
presidential election found that 68 percent of respondents said that they would
not favor a political and economic system no matter what it was called that
didn’t pivot off of a fundamental right to a job, that didn’t rest on
the fundamental premise that everyone in a society who is willing and able to
work should have a right to a job." Look how opinion has been shifted by shady pols and corporate media!When discussing the old folks of the Tea Party movement Mr. Reed responds to Thomas Frank saying that much of the accusations about President Obama being a Socialist or a Communist are just racist code words:Reed: "I'll tell you, it's that Birchite (John Birch Society) psychosis. This is the social base of fascism, really, is what they are."Frank: "They don't have street gangs."Reed: "No, thank God. Not yet anyway. And I guess that's partly because a lot of them are pensioners."Frank: "They'll get you with their golf carts."I can't help but think where "they" are going to get us is with their gun laws. As states add open carry of guns to stand-your-ground-laws to militias and neighborhood patrols by creeps how will we avoid the chill upon political discussion and demonstrations? How long will it take for the shooters to stand their ground in a heated debate or street protests? Do you think juries in those states will convict the shooters? I think that juries often rule against their own convictions when confronted with the hard fact of laws. If it's legal to stand your ground when threatened, if it's legal to pack heat, if a crowd of protesters illegally break out of their "free speech zone" ... Can the armed street gangs be far behind?